Hey, how switching the piety costs of humility and enlightenment, and have humility knock you back to level one sound? If it makes sense, then how about, if a dungeon boss is killed by a level one hero, the glowing guardian "beams with pride" which gives you a free 100 piety. (keep in mind, at this point the dungeon is already basically done). But, if dracul's altar is on the field undisturbed, then he summons a mirror image of you to fight, so that you can attempt to get to boss trophies in one sitting!? Even if this idea doesn't fly, I was really interested in the idea of having the Gods have relationships with each other, and have that relationship actually affect, or be affected by the players actions. Maybe desecrating the altar of an "allied god" would cause greater negative effects or a smaller piety plus? And destroying enemy Gods would have your God give you a positive effect (not a boon, just the opposite of the usual negative consequences) or simply more than the usual piety. This would probably throw balance into the wind, but I think it COULD be possible to work out. Any thoughts?

Paradoxically, giving gods more specific relationships make them interact -less- with each other. Remember how many times you used the "convert" ability in original DD? Most likely none, because friendly gods would almost never appear together.

It might be interesting to have a quest or two for each god, with a reward being a preparation that works well with followers of that god (like: winning a quest for Taurog gives the cleric building an ability to trade one glyph for a health potion)

Well, we know Taurog and Mystera don't get along. And whenever I pick Taurog as a god (I'm still enough of a noob that I do it pretty often, cause he's simple) I ALWAYS smash Mystera's altar. You'd think she'd get pissed at that and do something I actually cared about as a Taurog worshipper. Or Taurog should at least get one hell of a good laugh, like I do, whenever he see's her idiotic (against a disciple of Taurog) debuff. You are right that people didn't convert much in the alpha, but I always felt that was because piety was rarer, and there just wasn't enough reason to. Having the other God's play with you, just for being a good follower (say Mystera is horrified by a Taurog user getting 100 piety, and does something) would be kind of cool. You would actually have to pay attention to the altars on the field (or figure them out based on context if you hadn't fount them all) and it would be able to tell really cool stories about the pantheon that we would be part of molding.